PART III 12 INTERNATIONAL REFERRALS 12.1.4 UN SPECIALIZED AGENCIES AND OTHER UN BODIES A number of specialized UN agencies are concerned with various aspects of human rights, and some of them may deal with cases of individuals in certain circumstances. A few have already been referred to in earlier chapters, for example:  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the world’s leading agency on refugee issues. The UNHCR is heavily involved in protecting and assisting refugees in many OSCE countries;  The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is dedicated to protecting the human rights of children and has programmes in several OSCE countries to this end;  The International Labour Organization has adopted a large number of conventions on human rights issues such as slavery, freedom of association, forced labour, child labour, and workers’ rights;  UN field offices with special mandates operate in many countries, including in the OSCE area. Many of these are involved in various forms of human rights work, including supervising and training police forces, combating trafficking in human beings, or developing human rights institutions. Some of these missions may take up individual cases of human rights violations. 12.2 EUROPEAN MECHANISMS AND INSTITUTIONS The Council of Europe has adopted a broad range of important human rights standards that are legally binding on states that have ratified them. From the perspective of individual complaints of human rights violations, by far the most significant is the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which contains a procedure for individual petition. The Convention created the European Court of Human Rights to hear cases and pass binding judgements relating to the implementation of the rights and freedoms included in the Convention, which parallel those in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Court was restructured in the 1990s with the adoption and entry into force of Protocol No. 11; the new Court began operating under revised procedures in 1998. Most OSCE participating States have ratified the Convention and are subject to the jurisdiction of the Court. Under current procedures, individuals, groups of individuals, or NGOs may lodge an application directly with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if they believe 106